why is the kernel image compressed - Questions

This is a discussion on why is the kernel image compressed - Questions ; when i boot a system that runs kernel 2.6, i get a message saying
"Uncompressing linux . . ." why is the kernel image kept compressed?
wouldn't it be faster if it didn't have to be decompressed on every
boot?...

why is the kernel image compressed

when i boot a system that runs kernel 2.6, i get a message saying
"Uncompressing linux . . ." why is the kernel image kept compressed?
wouldn't it be faster if it didn't have to be decompressed on every
boot?

Re: why is the kernel image compressed

kartik wrote:
> when i boot a system that runs kernel 2.6, i get a message saying
> "Uncompressing linux . . ." why is the kernel image kept compressed?
> wouldn't it be faster if it didn't have to be decompressed on every
> boot?

No, the boot loader has a very crude disk driver; i.e slow. It's faster
to read a small number of blocks and uncompress in core.